Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Recently I made and brought 25 of these chocolate glazed baked donuts to bring to share with Evy's classmates and teacher. The teacher would do a little something special for the birthday boy or birthday girl and asked the students to sing the birthday song. Evy wanted to share some treat with her classmates and wanted me to bake something. I thought of this baked donuts because it was healthier for the kids, mainly made of yogurt. I added the chocolate glazed and sprinkles because the kids loved them, looked like a donut yeah?

Sunday, March 28, 2010

I had a spicy eggplant version with ground pork and this is my another version with chicken bits. This is of course healthier than ground pork as ground pork that we get in the store usually have lots of fat in it, unless you make your own ground pork with lean pork. Since I always have skinless and boneless chicken breasts at home, why not I just cut it into tiny bits (instead of ground chicken) like a 鸡球 to substitute the ground pork. I also used a different sauce for this, this is the sauce I used to stir-fry my kangkong belacan or any spicy Malaysian style vegetable. My short-cut sauce that I can easily buy it in any Asian store here.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Since I bought a bottle of Nam Yee (fermented red bean cubes) to make Chicken Biscuit (Kai Chai Peng), it had been left unattended. I was not familiar with Nam Yee and that was my first bottle. I searched the web for recipes that I could possibly use with Nam Yee and collected a few that I could try out. One of it was fried chicken wings with nam yee. Click read more for my version of the recipe. I hardly buy chicken wings anymore because I don't want to encourage my girls to eat chicken wings. And the best alternative I found was chicken thigh which I would cut away the skin and fat before chopping into pieces.

We gave it a thumb up! The cornstarch gave it a nice crunch and the nam yee gave it a unique taste. You do get the crunch without the skin! Next time I would try a bake version, as this will be healthier than deep-frying.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

I had to put delicious up there in the title because it was delicious. I used my marbled banana chocolate cake recipe and made it into chocolate banana cupcakes. I invited few friends for a play date and decided to make something for coffee/tea in the afternoon. I made this along with some chocolate chips cookies and I just realized all my snack have chocolate chips in it!

The cupcake was soft, moist, chocolaty and tasted like banana. Truly delectable! I added chocolate chips because my girls loved them. I had to stop them from eating more because this was meant to be shared. ;) At the play date, I noticed that all the kids would pick out the chocolate chips to eat first, my girls included. :) If you like my recipes, put this on your to-try list, you won't be disappointed.

I saw this butterfly silicon cupcake cups at Target and had to buy it, it was 6 for $1 at the Dollar section, how cheap. It was so cute too and I regretted I didn't pick up the flower silicon cups for the same price, as when I went back, it was all gone. :( I guess you paid for quality too, this had some broken pieces and the silicon was pretty thin, but it's usable.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Evy was diagnosed with ear infection recently. It was her first and since she didn't complain about her ear ache, I had no way to know. It got worst when her ear infection caused her to have high fever and coughs. Finally we took her to see her pediatrician because we thought she might have flu or H1N1 because the fever was high like 103.7'F. Then, it was diagnosed to be ear infection resulted from stuffy nose and caused the high fever because it was already inflamed. She was given antibiotic for 10 days. How magical was the antibiotic, just one dose and she was feeling much better. I gave her the ibuprofen for the fever and pain as well. Just like the pediatrician said, she would be herself and ready to go to school again.

I thought she was suffering from flu and wanted her to drink more fluid and lighter meal. So, I created this chicken shells soup for her. I only had shells pasta at home thus the used of shell pasta. I added mixed vegetable so that she could have some veggie in her diet. This will definitely be something I would cook when someone is not feeling well at home.

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast. This week host is Aqua from Served with Love. Do go and check out her delicious pasta round up tomorrow, March, 19th!

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

My blog is five years old today. It feels like just a blink of an eye but I have been blogging for five years! It showed how fast time has passed. I started just to share pictures of my home cook food and it blossomed into sharing my recipes to the world.

I was just sharing pictures and making friends in a food forum and one by one almost all of us started to have a food blog of our own. Some have stop blogging through these years and some are still going strong. Lots of fabulous blogs have emerged these past 2 years too and new food blogs have been created every day. I don't know how long will I be blogging because no one can predict the future. But I will still blog because it is my hobby and cooking is what I do almost every day and baking experiments in the kitchen such as creating new recipes is what I like and do best. Furthermore, I cannot let my avid readers or fans down, I recognized some readers have been following me through all these years (before Edda was born), here I would like to say thank you to you. For those who haven't, you are welcome to join me in Facebook by being a fan and feel free to share or drop comments and get involve.

Here to many more great years of blogging and happy 5th birthday Little Corner of Mine. This name was created with the thought that in the whole wide world of Internet space, there is this little corner of mine which belongs to me. But this little corner of mine has become public and hope it keeps on blossoming with your help.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

My mother in-law had been telling me to eat brown rice for couple of years but had been ignored. But slowly I did manage to incorporate some brown rice into our diet by mixing it with white rice. Recently I have been seeing the light on brown rice in the United States, brown rice finally got his fame and recognition after all these years of preferring refined white rice. Brown rice was a poor people food back then because only the rich can afford to buy the refined, processed and fragrant white rice. When people have more money, they expect a better quality and refine food. But by doing that, they are actually eating a less healthier food because refine food means a lot of the naturally good for you thing has been taken away by further processing. Processed food has added coloring, preservative, trans fats and terms that I don't know how to pronounce in it. So, now we learned that the minimally processed food is still the best for you, the best is to cook the food yourself at home with fresh grocery. Avoid refined food and go for whole wheat, brown rice, lots of different colors of vegetable, beans, nuts, extra-virgin olive oil, fruits, herbs and spices. It is easy to eat healthy and healthy food can be delicious. I am switching to brown rice because it is the right time to do so but I still keep some white rice for cooking my nasi lemak and porridge. As I don't think the nasi lemak (Malaysia fragrant coconut rice) would taste like nasi lemak if brown rice is used. The trick in cooking brown rice is you need to add more water, almost like double the white rice water amount. For my rice cooker, for 2 cups of white rice, I used 2.5 water level. But for cooking 2 cups of brown rice, I need to use 4.5 water level. Then, your brown rice will be soft and more easily digested (this is for cooking short grain brown rice). For long grain brown rice, for 2 cups of rice, I used 3.5 cups of water.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

This is onedelicious sweet soup I discovered by accident. I was planning to cook some red bean soup with orange peels. And then I remembered my mom used to add a handful of white glutinous rice with hers. Some people added some dried longan too. But I did not want the dried longan in my sweet soup and while trying to take out my shell pasta to cook noodle soup, I spotted my black glutinous rice. I was thinking why not I used the black glutinous rice instead of white since it was considered to be healthier. So, I used the black glutinous rice along with my red beans and dried orange peels and set my slow cooker to low and was really surprised at how tasty it was the next day. It was so delicious that I would cook this way often from now on.

I love to cook red beans and black glutinous rice in my slow cooker overnight, because I will be rewarded with a soft and gluey and delicious sweet soup in the morning, without fail. I liked mine soupy thus I added a lot more water.

Monday, March 08, 2010

Sorry for the bad pictures because it was taken at night. I saw this Golden Ingots at Daily Affairs and decided to give it a try. It was really an interesting idea and very suitable for Chinese New Year. The bottom layer was fried beancurd puff (taufu pok) and topped with meat ball of sort.

I prepared it in the afternoon and took an un-fried version. The natural lighting made the food looks so good. Too bad I was just too lazy to fried some just to take the finished products for this post. I used ground pork and water chestnut for mine with my own seasonings.

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

What so special about this rice dish? Special as in the cooking method is different, it took two steps. One is stir-frying the rice first, you can add in eggs for eggs fried rice, or leave it plain, just soy sauce and garlic. I left the rice above plain because I just had eggs fried rice the day before. Then, you prepare a white sauce dish to pour it on top. The white sauce dish can be shrimps with frozen mixed vegetable, or fish with Chinese green (chai Hsin) like above, or scallops with beaten egg white, basically anything you can think of. Serve it as one dish meal. I have a similar fish recipe here if you want to take a look.

Because of the sauce laden on the eggs fried rice, it made the rice soft and can be easily digested by elderly people or young children.

Monday, March 01, 2010

My simple lunch on Sunday. I don't normally cooked dishes and rice on weekends. Usually it would be something simple like fried noodle (any variety) or fried rice. We had something special today because I saved some jicama beancurd rolls for ourselves like what you read on my last posting. Simple fried bee hoon like what you get at the night market in Malaysia can be satisfying, simple like only fried with bean sprouts. I don't know what is the charm of this simple fried bee hoon, do you know? Or perhaps it was just something we used to have when we grew up.

Delicious fried bee hoon! I recommend the Elephant brand bee hoon and also Wei Wei bee hoon. These brands of bee hoon/vermicelli are thin and won't break easily when stir-frying.

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast. This is my first entry for the new year 2010. Wow, it has been a while. This week host is non-other than Ruthherself,do go and check out Once Upon a Feast delicious round up on March, 5th! It is also the Third Birthday of PPN.